Question

This seems like it must be so simple, but regular expressions are extremely confusing to me. I am grabbing $_GET variables that will look like typeX, optionX, groupX, etc. where X equals any positive whole integer. I need to then split the string at the integer so that type1 becomes an array of “type and “1”, however type10 must become an array of “type and “10” not “type” and “1” and “0”.

I am wholly unfamiliar with regex patterns but ended up coming up with:

$array = preg_split("#\\d+#", $key, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($array);

but it just removed the number from the end rather than split the string into two arrays as was shown by the result:

Array ( [0] => type )

Also, I am unsure as if this would further split the number ten into a one and a zero, which I don’t want. I feel like this is probably a mind numbingly simple solution but I am spinning in circles here.

Answer 1

You should use the PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE flag to capture the group which you made the split on. Here’s an example:

<?php

$key= "group12";
$pattern = "/(\d+)/";

$array = preg_split($pattern, $key, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY | PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
print_r($array);

?>

Note that you combine several flags using the | “bitwise or” operator.

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => group
    [1] => 12
)